Monday, August 31, 2009

Hello! Mr Question Man isback on the case, this time posing a question I've long puzzled over:

Why does anyone care what anyone else is wearing?

First thing is the sheer and unremitting panic felt by certain members of the population when they go somewhere and someone else is wearing the same thing that they are wearing! I'd take that as a compliment and say, "Hey, look! It's the same t-shirt and shorts as I'm wearing! Small world! Small, and funny, and fine." But it's enough to make some people run home and change real quick.

Then you see the people who have gone to the mall or off to a convention to play Jumble (That Scrambled Word Game) and they have evidently pre-planned the wardrobes. Notice how often teenagers will be roaming the mall in packs of two, identically turned out! "You wearing your Aéropostale tshirt and the jeans with the rips right where your knee replacement scar will show in 47 years?," is how I imagine the conversation. (I could be wrong.)

By the way, how come people flock to that store and no one even knows how to pronounce its name? I hear ARROWpostal and Air-uh-pahhhstil and I wonder how the name of a defunct French airmail company became the name of the place Where T-shirts Are To Be Bought. My shirts: Eddie Bauer; my pants, L.L. Bean. Easy to say, easy to pay.

And this worrying about what everyone else is wearing to a function? Why, now? If someone else feels like wearing overalls to a cookout and you're all in linen and lace, how is your life changed? Junior Samples looked like he had lots of fun at cookouts over the years. I betcha any amount of money he couldn't have cared less what anyone else was wearing.

Pretty much every day, I am clad the same: red socks, either khaki or dark blue chinos, polo shirt or button-down sport shirt, undershirt and appropriate undergarments. Not for me to stand and puzzle over which studded belt or encrusted sport shirt to wear. If something major is coming up, I will put on a tie.

Life is simple, since I am. Don't worry about what anyone is wearing, including yourself, as long as your whatsis is not a) cold b) hot or c) showing.

Sunday, August 30, 2009

At first glance, one might think this is a picture of some sort of horrible carnage, but it's not. It's actually vegetablage, to coin a neologism, and it's a sign of misplaced priorities, to me.

Here's the story as I found it on one of the internets:

La Tomatina is a food fight festival held on the last Wednesday of August each year in the town of Buñol in the Valencia region of Spain. Tens of thousands of participants come from all over the world to fight in a brutal battle where more than one hundred metric tons of over-ripe tomatoes are thrown in the streets.Approximately 20,000-50,000 tourists come to the tomato fight, multiplying by several times Buñol's normal population of slightly over 9,000. In preparation for the dirty mess that will ensue, shopkeepers use huge plastic covers on their storefronts in order to protect them.

Now, I have nothing at all against the Buñolians throwing tomatoes around if that's what they want to do. However, I used to work in a building with a homeless shelter located therein, and I know that the earnest people who try to supply food for people experiencing homelessness go to all sorts of measures to try to locate nutritious food for the people. You have to figure that "tens of thousands of metric tons" of tomatoes would make at least enough spaghetti sauce for hundreds of thousands of spaghetti dinners. I'm just sayin'.

And ketchup! My grandmother made her own ketchup, or catsup if you will, as well as root beer, mayonnaise, pickle relish and canned beets, and one of the last things she ever told me as she drew me closer to her deathbed was, "Mark...remember..they don't use the best tomatoes for ketchup...I'm just sayin'.."

I have to wonder, quite frankly, what the devil it is with Spain, with people willing to travel great distances to get involved in activities of dubious value, for which one needs goggles. What the hell is it over there?

Remember those dialogues from Spanish class, all about "¡Hola, Juan! ¿Como esta usted?" Well, what's up with Juan next? Is the new next line "¿Quiere ser pisoteado por un toro o quieres tener tomates lanzado en usted?" ("Do you want to be trampled by a bull or do you want to have tomatoes thrown at you?")

The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind. Along with the aroma of enteric fermentation of ruminant cattle, and a tangy, rich, tomatoey-goodness wafting by.

Saturday, August 29, 2009

When you buy a pair of shoes, you try them on first, am I wrong? Before selecting a cantaloupe or honeydew melon down at the Try 'N' Save, you give it the *thump!* test and also take a little snifferootie right at the tip where the stem was cut off. A road test before purchasing a car or truck is certainly a great idea.

But let's say you're going out to buy yourself a new dictionary. You know why; the old one is a bit out of date, showing countries in Africa that have changed their name seven times since it was published, and it does not list new-fangled words such as "computer," "microwave," and "birther". (PS Don't believe that rumor running 'round that holds that "gullible" is not really a word and is not really in the dictionary.)

Here's a simple test. Grab ahold of that big hefty hearty meatloaf of a dictionary down at the Barnes & Whoosit and open to the "E" section. Look for the word "eleemosynary," which I first encountered in one of the alliterative, addle-pated admonitory assaults launched by disgraced former Vice President Spiro T. Agnew some years ago. It means charitable, but it's a perfectly cromulent word and if the dictionary you are considering purchasing includes it in its lexicon, you have made an excellent selection.

Friday, August 28, 2009

It took a long, long time, but I realized something - I am really mad at a lot of people. No, not those people. I'm talking about the people who told us when we were little kids that the Russians were all planning to come and annihilate us with their Sputniks and stomp us into the frozen tundra and the worst thing is that all the Russians looked like Nikita Krushchev.

Even the women, they hissed.

Well sir, I don't presume to evaluate an entire country full of women, nor would I want to, but hello! There is Mila Kunis from the 70's Show and movies such as Forgetting Sarah Marshall, and Natalie Wood (born Natalia Zacharenko,of Russian parentage, and there is Olga, a waitress who served us so very nicely last week at the fashionable Lobster House in Cape May and there is Kseniya, the lovely young receptionist at the physical therapy place I go to and I don't know who-all else but there are enough right there to put the kibosh on the Krushchev-lookalike thing. Any country that sends us Mila Kunis enjoys most-favored nation status with me, I'll tell you that right now.

And don't you just know that on the very same day I was sitting at Hampton Elementary School, hearing Miss Van Breeman weave her babushka of propaganda, some impressionable Russian kid was sitting in Hamptonovich School being told by Miss Anastasia that all American women look like Dwight Eisenhower. And I bet he believed her, the fool.

Thursday, August 27, 2009

Even though we knew it was coming, it's still so hard to deal with the passing of Ted Kennedy. He would be the first to say that no one man's leavetaking should or could stop the social progress and search for justice to which he devoted his life. As the president said yesterday, his legacy lives on in the better lives enjoyed by the disadvantaged, the chance for equality as exemplified by our wonderful president, and the chance for a better education offered to so many children.

Those unfamiliar with the Kennedy saga would have done well to have watched Brian Williams on NBC Nightly News last night. His retrospective on the senator's life and family history was informative and touching throughout. Informative, you say? As if there's a sentient American who didn't know that Sen. Kennedy was the last in the long line of liberal lions in the Senate; the last great statesman of the Kennedy dynasty, and a man whose wisdom is revered from coast to coast! Everyone knows Senator Kennedy. At least they know who he is. Further details might be lacking, as in the case of the local news buffoon who announced the sad news with the requisite sad puppy- dog eyes and slightly lowered voice this way:

"Theodore Kennedy............ has died. The Massachusetts senator had been battling brain cancer...."

Some things never change in TV. People battle cancer, blazes roar through buildings, shots ring out, people are rushed to the hospital, security gets beefed up.

And when actors and celebrities deign to share stories of their personal lives on TV, they will always talk about "Duke" Wayne or "Bill" Holden and all the other "in" nicknames.

But, for crying out loud! Calling Edward Moore Kennedy "Theodore" is about as dense an act as calling our 16th president "Bob" Lincoln. This anchor needs to study up on things. I know that Ralph Cronkite or Hector Brinkley would never have made that error.

Wednesday, August 26, 2009

I'm a big fan of life, and I find it endlessly fascinating: your life, my life, our collective lives. That's why I don't make a lot of room in my library for fiction; there are so many facts to be learned! And lessons.Like this one. My cell phone is acting up. Again. It's one of those flip-open jobs with a QWERTY keyboard, and after work I'm heading to the won't-say-the-name-of-the-wireless-company-but-it-rhymes-with-Horizon store so I can get one with a WORKING keyboard. What happens is, nothing happens. I'll be at work or at home whisking a souffle or piloting my yacht into a slip at St. Tropez and suddenly it will dawn on me that I haven't had a call or a text for a while. I'll look at the phone and find it has turned itself off. Not good. Turn it back on and it stays turned on for a couple of hours, much like Jon Gosselin, before cutting out again, much like Jon Gosselin. The battery is charged; I've removed the battery and put it back in and tried every which-a-way to fix this. In June, I took the phone back to the store and got a replacement, and this time, I'm going to ask for a different kind of phone. One that works would be nice.And yesterday I called the good people at Mesmerizin' and talked to a woman who really followed the script. She found out my first name and used it 157 times in a five-minute conversation. Ever notice that technique that is supposed to ingratiate the speaker unto you? "Well, Mark, I can certainly appreciate how inconvenient this has been for you, Mark, so let's see how we can resolve this issue for you, Mark. Mark, would it be possible for you to return the phone to the store where you purchased it, Mark?"I don't want this to turn into one of those posts where I babble on about how we didn't use to have cell phones and how much simpler life would be if only we weren't so bound to our technology and so on. That's why you see so few Luddites today. No one wanted to marry them and give birth to Luddite, Jr. The fact is, we are used to having our technology and our cell phones and our iPods and our DVRs and email and I don't know what-all else. But here's what I was driving at. Or, more accurately stated, driving past. On the way to work I saw some guys at the cemetery (the one with the ominous slogan "Now, above-ground burial is within the reach of all" on the archway as one enters) and they were preparing the ground for someone's funeral. All low tech stuff: tents, shovels, picks, wheelbarrows. It was a reminder that a time is coming when we won't care so much about our cell phones. Enjoy things while you have them, but don't sweat the small stuff. And don't small the sweaty stuff.

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Several weeks ago, two people were shot at Harborplace, the glitzy, glammy downtown shopping and eating district down by Baltimore's Inner Harbor to which tourists flock and spend money. So you can see why the mayor and the police commissioner about had a cow over that, and they promised all sorts of increased police presence to keep the area safe for all those big butter and egg men and their women who pack the harbor, especially on weekends, and for me, since I was last there in about 1986. I'm sure I'm about to go back any day now.

Anyway, leave me out of this; I don't go downtown. This fellow Tony Fein, who is trying to make the Ravens, stopped at H-place on Sunday evening for a bite to eat while waiting for his latest tattoo to dry (speculation on my part, admitted!) and was spotted by a security guard, allegedly part of a group passing a shiny object around. The guard did as he had been instructed; he called 911 to have a police check out his suspicion that a gun was being passed around.

The police came and asked Fein to stand up. Read all about it here in the arrest report as filed by city police. The cop told him to stand up, he refused, the cops ordered him to stand up and he stood up so he could knock the cop to the ground. Fein knew he didn't have a gun. All he had to do was tell the officer that it was a cell phone, that someone had made a mistake, but no, he had to get all testosterony and put a smackdown down. Smart move, Tony. For your efforts you got to go to Central Booking, where the city put you up for the night among the others arrested on another night in downtown Baltimore. I wonder if they still play the harmonica all low and mournfully while in the Graybar Hilton. The hoosegow. The pokey. The license plate factory.

My father was a very smart man. Among the advice that he doled out in easily-digestible doses were these gems: Never get your wife a present that plugs in to a wall outlet, and always do what a police officer tells you to do. If you're not breaking the law, it won't take long to make that obvious (right, Tony?) And if you are breaking the law, slide over, Tony. Another big dog's coming in for an overnighter.

This guy Fein served in Iraq before going to college. He's 27, a bit older than most rookies. I'd expect him to be smarter than most, too, but I'd be wrong.

Monday, August 24, 2009

Ladies and gentlemen, the point of today's sermonette is to remind all of us to be careful in writing and speaking. Just to set the mood, I'll tell one on myself: some years ago I sent an email (work-related) to someone higher in rank from whom I needed a favor. I knew she had a lot on her plate, as they say at work and at buffets. So I cleverly started it out, "I know you are very busty, but I was wondering if..."

I don't recall her response, but I'll bet she did more than just spell-check it.

Anyway - how about this for an actual web address - it must have made a fine corporate name, but the name that looked just fine on a letterhead suffered a lot from being squeezed together as a dot.com:

Who Represents?, a company where you can check out actors and others who are represented by agents and the like: www.whorepresents.com.

And when Liberty Records pressed several hundred thousand copies of Canned Heat's 45 of "Let's Work Together," some poorly laid-out typography made the title of the song on the flip side, something called "I'M HER MAN," appear to be something called "I'M HERMAN." It should have been a munster hit, but that was not to be.

Verbal slips include Sally Field, the actress once most famous for playing Gidget and then most famous for shrieking, "You like me! You really like me!" upon winning an award, doing the spot for "once-monthly Boniva." Except: listen to the way she says it: "One Smonthly Boniva."

All this came to mind on vacation when we heard what we thought was a commercial for a pizza and sub shop called "Uncle Loogie's." At least, that's the way the announcer kept saying it. Outside of calling your business something even more gross than "Loogie's," I couldn't think of a worse name for a sub shop. So I checked it out. It's Uncle Oogie's. Sounds better that way, does it not?

Sunday, August 23, 2009

The Italian place where we had dinner the other night in Stone Harbor, NJ, was a true Italian restaurant. The real deal...pictures of Italy on the walls, poster showing all the various pastas ever made, irked-looking owner hovering over the cash register (he would be played by Dennis Farina if the need ever arose to make a movie of our week at the beach.) In fact, the place was so authentic that I went to the men's room and felt around behind the toilet, looking for a stashed rod. You know, a shooting iron, a heater, a cannon, a roscoe. A gat.

You know, I really need to stop taking the movies so seriously. They're only make-believe, after all.

The food was great, and only the lack of anchovies in the Caesar salad held me back from giving them two hearty thumbs up.

But as we were leaving, and I did my standard finished-in-the-men's-room wait by the front door (the second trip was for the usual purposes), I overheard a young female waitperson ask another to go with her to table 5 to open a bottle of wine. She had the winged corkscrew all ready to go, but then the other young lady raised her eyebrows and her hands simultaneously in the time-honored, universal "I don't know!" gesture. They both said they didn't know how to work the thing, and couldn't ask the boss because they were supposed to know how to operate a corkscrew as part of their jobs. (He did not appear to be a man who entertained such questions with equanimity.) This, even though the place has no liquor license, so what they do is supply glasses for those who bring in their own hooch.

My first reaction was to offer a brief tutorial in corkscrew operation, even though the vast majority of wine bottles I have opened in my days have been of the screw-top variety and contained Boone's Farm or Ripple of uncertain vintage. It's in my nature, for whatever it's worth, to be patient in showing people how to do things, although certain disagreement on that point might be heard from Peggy in the area of instruction in the use of a manual transmission.

But I didn't say anything. Sure, I would have, had the young ladies said, "Hey, you're pretty old, so you must know how to decant wine, carve a standing rib roast and change a flat tire, right? Show us how to do the wine bottle, wouldja?"

I briefly considered draping a white towel over my right arm and sommeliering over to table 5, a solution that died aborning, since I didn't know table 5 from the periodic table.

Then Peggy came along and of course as always, I was so swept up in her presence that we headed for the shopping district.

I still don't know what I should have done about the corkscrew lesson. Part of me says the gallant thing would have been to at least offer a quick lesson, and part of me says anything I had done along those lines would only have been perceived as pedantic and show-offy.

And part of me says to do what Dick Cheney would have done, namely, shoot someone in the face so no one would be so worried about opening their wine. Man, I wish he was only make-believe.

DANGEROUS LONG PERIOD SOUTHEAST SWELL GENERATED BY HURRICANE BILLWILL CONTINUE TO BUILD ACROSS THE COASTAL WATERS TONIGHT INTOSATURDAY...THEN PERSIST INTO SUNDAY. SEAS WILL BUILD TO 6 TO 8FEET BY SATURDAY MORNING...THEN PEAK BETWEEN 10 TO 13 FEETSATURDAY EVENING THROUGH EARLY SUNDAY MORNING. BREAKING WAVES INTHE SURF ZONES SHOULD RANGE MAINLY FROM 5 TO 7 FEET...WITH SOME 8FOOT WAVES POSSIBLE. IN ADDITION...THERE WILL BE HIGH ASTRONOMICALTIDES ASSOCIATED WITH THE CURRENT NEW MOON CYCLE. THESE FACTORSWILL RESULT IN A HIGH RISK OF RIP CURRENTS LASTING THROUGH THEWEEKEND.

THE ROUGH SURF WILL ALSO CAUSE SOME BEACH EROSION AND POSSIBLYOCEAN OVERWASH...ESPECIALLY AROUND THE TIMES OF HIGH TIDE ONSATURDAY AND SUNDAY.

PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS...

A HIGH SURF ADVISORY MEANS THAT HIGH SURF WILL AFFECT BEACHES INTHE ADVISORY AREA...PRODUCING RIP CURRENTS AND LOCALIZED BEACHEROSION.

A HIGH RISK OF RIP CURRENTS MEANS WIND AND OR WAVE CONDITIONSSUPPORT THE DEVELOPMENT OF DANGEROUS RIP CURRENTS...ESPECIALLY INTHE VICINITY OF JETTIES...PIERS AND SANDBARS. RIP CURRENTS ARELIFE-THREATENING TO ANYONE WHO ENTERS THE SURF. BE ESPECIALLYCAUTIOUS WITH OUTGOING TIDES WHICH IMPROVE RIP CURRENT FORMATION.ALL BEACH GOERS SHOULD REMAIN AWARE OF INHERENT DANGERS WHENENTERING THE SURF INCLUDING SWIFT LONGSHORE CURRENTS...POUNDINGSHORE BREAK AND SHALLOW SAND BARS.

RIP CURRENTS ARE STRONG...NARROW CHANNELS OF WATER THAT FLOW OUTTO SEA. IF YOU BECOME CAUGHT IN A RIP CURRENT...REMAIN CALM. TRYTO SWIM ON A COURSE THAT IS PARALLEL TO THE BEACH UNTIL YOU GETAWAY FROM THE RIP...THEN SWIM AT AN ANGLE IN TO SHORE. DO NOT TRYTO SWIM BACK TO SHORE DIRECTLY AGAINST THE RIP...SINCE IT CANEXHAUST AND EVEN KILL THE STRONGEST SWIMMER.

Now, having read and digested all this, it's fairly clear that one should not venture out into rough waters, am I wrong? I'm writing this on Friday night. Does anyone wish to bet that sometime on Saturday some Coast Guard personnel or some local lifeguards will have to risk their lives to save the life of some surfer or kayaker or thrillseeker who just HAD to test the raging waters of Hurricane Bill? Do we not see this in every storm - rough waters, people running for protection, and some shirtless yahoo out in a catamaran or something, bobbing around and endangering himself, the rescue personnel and the catamaran?

High tides and rip current. Add a couple of Coronas and watch the trouble begin.

And it wasn't until I got a comment from another friend that I realized whom I forgot!

In the fall of '91, a local radio station somehow finagled with the county fathers to put on a concert at lunchtime one workday. The entertainment was to be Alice Cooper. I always had the impression that the people from the radio station told the people who made the decision to turn the Courthouse Plaza into a lunchtime Woodstock that the concert would feature "Alice Cooper," and the powers-that-be said, oh, she sounds lovely, probably a folk singer in a gingham dress with an acoustic guitar, and a collie sitting by her side while she plays the mountain ballads and the folk songs of our land (line courtesy of Johnny Cash.) Alice Cooper is a name that does make you think of granola and hand-woven blankets and spinning wheels. It sounds like Sarah McLachlan, only, you know, not quite as zesty.

So my buddy Sue from Head Start was there and we enjoyed the heck out of the show; Alice did all his big ones, such as "Under My Wheels," "Be My Lover," and "No More Mr. Nice Guy" - which was later used for a telebiopic about Dick Cheney. On the same steps upon which daily prance countless attorneys, defendants, witnesses, plaintiffs, cops and courthouse employees, Alice (ne Vincent Furnier) put on a bravado show. His loudspeakers, each easily the size of a large SUV, rocked the buildings to the point at which they seemed to be physically shaking.

I wish I had remembered it when I was making up the list, but it was fun, and Sue, you were good company! And they never had another lunchtime concert at the courthouse. Imagine that!

Thursday, August 20, 2009

More thoughts of Woodstock...40 years ago...two weeks before that event took place not-in-Woodstock, some friends and I went to the Atlantic City Pop Festival in the now-defunct racetrack which was not in that New Jersey seaside town. Just as Woodstock actually took place in Bethel, so did Atlantic City take place in Mays Landing, but anyway... I think there were about 6 of us in Jomo's VW bus...let's see, I think Richard Foard, Gary Durrett, Rob (Sam)Kirckhoff, John (Jomo) Williamson, his brother Mark, and I were the group. I might be wrong; it's been a long time. But this was a three-day event and we only drove up for the Saturday show. I remember seeing Creedence Clearwater Revival, Biff Rose, Tim Buckley, Lighthouse, Jefferson Airplane, Hugh Masekela and there must have been others. It was more than a twelve-hour show. My two favorite non-musical memories, you ask? How about when a couple of us were roaming around back where the bands were offloading their equipment, and I was standing beneath the descending liftgate of a truck containing sound equipment for Jefferson Airplane. Jack Casady and Jorma Kaukonen from that august band (hey, right month, too!) were riding down along with the amps and speakers and I don't know what-all else. Seeing that my head was just a foot away from being squished by the liftgate. Casady looked at me, and I'll never forget the kind words of advice he offered."Get the #*$ out of the way, willya?" he offered. And I honored his offer.And then later, in the middle of the night on the way home, we stopped at some roadside diner in the wilds of South Jersey. Waiting for our cheeseburgers, we saw a little wizened man clad in what, some months before, had been a pristine white outfit. Shirt, pants, undershirt, little paper hat - all once been whiter than the tundra in February, but by August, all had accumulated a layer of grease, grime, filth, scuzz and atop it all, a patina of scum. He stuck his head out of the kitchen doorway to speak to the counter attendant. He was one of those talented guys who could speak while a Pall Mall bobbed in his lower lip in time with his uvula. The cigarette had about an inch of ash glowing off the end as he smoked and talked and talked and smoked and somewhere, our burgers were sizzlin'. Jomo said,"That's the guy who's cooking our food." We ate heartily, enjoying the extra charcoal-flavor goodness.Good times, good times. These are the moments of one's life, the Kodak moments. I don't have any pictures of it, though.

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

There are, what, thirty, or forty at the most, scenarios for cartoons. Let's see, you got "Guy lying on psychiatrist's couch," "clueless boss behind giant desk," "two sailors washed up on a tiny island with one palm tree," and don't forget "Guy just smashed his thumb with a hammer."What follows Mr Hammerhead is usually the guy hopping around, tossing the hammer earthward and turning the air blue with his cursing.By the way, did you ever slip and let fly a bad word in front of a small child, who then looks up at you and says, all disappointed, "You said a CURSE!" Makes you just wanna dig a hole and jump in it, doesn't it? Careful with that shovel now, Mordecai - mind you don't smash your thumb with it again!Well, now we have evidence that cursing helps. To wit: It just makes sense — and eases the pain — to swear when you get hurt, researchers report.Profane volunteers tolerated pain 50% longer than their non-cussing peers, according to a study in NeuroReport.Richard Stephens said the findings might explain why cursing developed and persists. But he offered a caveat."If they want to use this pain-lessening effect to their advantage they need to do less casual swearing," he told the BBC. "Swearing is emotional language, but if you overuse it, it loses its emotional attachment."The findings were cheered by a member of the Casual Swearing Appreciation Society, who said he thought the study was "the first time swearing's benefits had been proved," the Beeb writes.So! You have permission to try out some of those words you learned in 4th grade when that tough new kid from Chicago moved in. Chipped tooth, corduroy pants and a leather jacket with wool sleeves, right from JC Penney out in the heartland...that's tough.

And he had older brothers with expansive vocabularies, and he was to teach the entire 4th grade terms involving procreation, biological/physiological definitions and novel methods of gratification. Only now do we learn that Spike from Chi was a man ahead of his time, purely existentialist in his lonesome keening response to pain.It very well may help to turn the air blue after a thumbsmash, but I thunder mighty curses at the nonsense of Rush O'Hannity, and nothing. Perhaps I need to holler more casually.

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

I'm curiously fascinated by the little (in some cases, not so little) decals that people have made up to place on their car windows, a memorial to friends and kinfolk gone on. And you know what; I really think they had their origins when everyone back in '01 was running around buying stickers to salute Dale Earnhardt Sr (1951 - 2001 - Gone To Race In A Better Place.)I believe everyone saw those stickers and said it was a good idea, so let's get one made up to say goodbye to our kith and kin. I wonder if the dearly departed look down from their clouds and offer a special "Clarence from It's a Wonderful Life" blessing on cars bearing their name and threnodic words. I hope we don't have to see stickers lamenting the end of the dream of a better society for all. Funny, this Glenn Beck thing with the "let's go back to acting like we did on 9/12/01" society. I was still with 911 on that day, and that's when everyone started calling to report that their neighbors were "foreign-looking" and bringing home blue plastic bags of who-knows-what at night (the better, one presumed, to make a hummus bomb.) Yes, there was a time of national closeness and an upsurge in patriotism and kindliness, but also fear and suspicion and finger-pointing and arm-flailing retaliation that we don't need to see again. Or need again.

Monday, August 17, 2009

On the Woodstock CD, formerly the Woodstock cassette, formerly the Woodstock 8-Track, formerly the Woodstock 3-LP set, you'll hear the voice of John Sebastian - same voice that sang "Daydream" with The Lovin' Spoonful and "Welcome Back, Kotter" - ask for a glass of water before launching into "Rainbows Over Your Blues." He dedicates the song to a guy whom "Chip" (Monck) just told him about...this guy's old lady had just given birth to a baby, and Sebastian just knew he was going to be a groovy baby.That baby is 40 now. When he turned 5, there were gas lines and Nixon resigned. At 10, there was disco. He turned 15 in time for the LA Olympics, "Hot For Teacher" and the Colts being ripped off (still not over it!). When he hit 20, it was Tiananmen Square and the beginning of the revolutions that crumbled the Eastern Bloc. In 1994, when he was 25, he saw Nancy Kerrigan get kneewhacked on orders from skankazoid Tonya Harding, and watched spellbound as OJ Simpson took it on the lam. When he hit 30, the entire world was gripped by the virulent Y2K fever. And for his 35th birthday, Baby Woody saw Martha Stewart head for the slammer and the Red Sox beat the curse of the Bambino to win the World Serious. Happy Birthday, Woodstock Nation! Lordy, lordy, look who's I don't know what!

Sunday, August 16, 2009

but doggone if they don't make me happy! Today is a day when I take an annual pause to look back and think about all that Elvis did for us while he was alive, before he "died" in 1977 on this date (as IF!)

Without Elvis, there would have been no Beatles, no Stones, no who knows who-all. Had Elvis not come along, youth culture as we have enjoyed it since 1955 would probably have remained as it was from 1776 to 1955 - subsumed by mothers and fathers, Janie and Junior being tiny little replicas of Mom and Dad.

Once the King assumed the throne, things got better, musically speaking. But when he passed away ( and I believe his spirit lives on like Santa) his influence waned.

Therefore, it was such a treat to see these two young ladies, Chantil and Kristen, from Hurricane Middle School in Hurricane, WV. Their recent social studies fair project on Elvis received first place in their school, then first place in the regional contest, and finally, first place in the West Virginia State Competition. Chantil and Kristen, who were already big Elvis fans, are celebrating with their first trip to Graceland this week, just in time for Elvis Week at his palatial mansion.

Here's to the fine people from Hurricane Middle School in Hurricane WV, educators who realize that there is more that a child needs to learn than the date when the Magna Carta was signed and how many litres there are in a quart. (The answer to both, as any school kid knows, is 1215.) Teaching kids about Elvis teaches them about a boy from humble roots who never forgot to say "ma'am" and "sir", and peeled off millions of dollars for charity over the years, a boy who overcame those humble roots and came to sit atop the entertainment world, a man who left too soon but left an untoppable legacy.

Saturday, August 15, 2009

I was a big fan of Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention. You remember them, if for nothing else, for being mentioned in Deep Purple's "Smoke On The Water" -

.."but Frank Zappa and the Mothers had the best place around...til some stupid with a flare gun burned the place to the ground."

This was in reference to a recording studio that Zappa operated that did catch fire. Also during those turbulent 70's, some crazed fan, not with a flare gun, threw Frank off the stage somewhere in Europe and left him hobbling on a broken leg.

Frank got into a tiff with Tipper Gore in 1985 about the lurid, indecent rock and roll lyrics, and that was his last big hurrah. He died in '93.

But...rooting around the other day, I stumbled across this obituary for one of his band members:

Copyright The Washington Post Company Nov 11, 2008Jimmy Carl Black, 70, who went from drummer in Frank Zappa's avant-garde Mothers of Invention to doughnut shop worker and house painter, died Nov. 1 of cancer in Siegsdorf, Germany, said Roddie Gilliard, a British musician who performed with him.

Mr. Black, who had Cheyenne ancestry, was known for a line ad-libbed on the Mothers of Invention's third album, "We're Only In It for the Money," which made fun of hippies.

"Hi, boys and girls," he said. "I'm Jimmy Carl Black, and I'm the Indian of the group."

Early on, he played backing music for strippers. In 1964, he was playing in a Los Angeles band called the Soul Giants that recruited Zappa as lead guitarist.Zappa took over, changed the group's name and, according to Mr. Black, boasted that "if you guys learn my music, I'll make you rich and famous."

"He took care of half of that promise, because I'm damn sure I didn't get rich," recalled Mr. Black, who was a vocalist as well as a drummer.

The Mothers satirized pop music and gloried in their weirdness and their eagerness to offend even their fans. "You think we're singing 'bout someone else, but you're plastic people," they sang on their 1967 album, "Absolutely Free."

He credited Zappa, who died in 1993, with introducing him to modern classical music and teaching him complex rhythms.

After Zappa disbanded the original Mothers of Invention in 1969, Mr. Black played in a rock and blues band called Geronimo Black. The band flopped, and in 1972, Mr. Black worked in a doughnut shop in Texas.

In 1975, he played with the experimental rocker Captain Beefheart. He appeared as Lonesome Cowboy Burt in Zappa's film "200 Motels," and in 1980, he worked on several songs for Zappa's "You Are What You Is."

"I had a really good time with Frank at that time, and he really treated me great. I even got paid," he said.James Inkanish Jr. was born Feb. 1, 1938, in El Paso. He changed his name to Jimmy Carl Black after his stepfather, Carl Black.

In the 1980s, he formed a house-painting company in Texas with British singer Arthur Brown, who had a hit as "the god of hell fire." Mr. Black moved to Italy in 1992 and to Germany in 1995, finding enough work to survive as a musician.

He is survived by his wife, Monika, and six children.

The Crazy World of Arthur Brown needed a primer and two coats.

So! There you have it. One guy famous for saying "I'm the Indian of the group", another one famous for hollering "I am the God of hellfire, and I bring you........." wind up working together!

I say the coolest thing to be able to say in Texas in the 1980's, just ahead of "That Bush boy ain't a-goin' nowhere," would have been to come to work one day and say, "You guys will NEVER guess who's PAINTING MY HOUSE today!"

RIP, Jimmy. We who still listen to "We're Only In It For The Money," "Absolutely Free," and "Uncle Meat" salute you!

Friday, August 14, 2009

I'm no fan of Best Buy. I find their stores to be an assault on the senses, aural and visual, and even visceral, when they are demonstrating a bass speaker for the benefit of some music lover. It feels like the entire rhythm section of some band I don't want to hear is playing through speakers rigged up to my spine, and if there's one thing I don't need to hear, it's "Boom Boom Pow," the tender love ballad by Black-Eyed Peas, boom boom powing into my iliac crest.

But this story from the other day is even worse than a Lady GaGa medley of "Poker Face" and "Just Dance." Take it away, Associated Press!

Few if any of the deals retailers have offered online during the recession have been as good as Best Buy Inc.'s sale price of $9.99 on a 52-inch TV Wednesday. But it quickly turned out the offer was too good to be true.

The electronics retailer said it will not honor the $9.99 price posted Wednesday morning on its Web site for a 52-inch Samsung flat-screen TV. By early afternoon, the TV was listed at $1,799.99, almost half off the original $3,399.99 price.

Bloggers and Twitterers lit up the Internet with posts about the offer, some insisting Best Buy must honor it, others making jokes.

Best Buy, based in Richfield, Minn., said it has corrected an online pricing error and will not honor the incorrect price. Orders made Wednesday morning at the incorrect price will be canceled and customers will receive refunds, the company said.

Best Buy did not immediately return a call for additional comment.

Shares fell 27 cents to close at $36.50 Wednesday.

So, some half-awake gozzlehead at BB HQ forgot a few digits. $1,799.99 is substantially more than $9.99 - just ask anyone who ever tried to pay for a Big Weekend with a ten-spot. I'm not an attorney, but I see handsome men and lovely women play them on TV, and I know that Abbie Carmichael on Law and Order and Perry Mason on Perry Mason would see justice served to this tune: retailers ought to have to stick to the price that appears in their ad. Not our fault if their gozzlehead puts in the wrong price. And once they accept the sale price and complete transactions with people on line, doesn't that oblige them to honor the deal they made?

One time some wiseguy used car dealer was selling used cars for "500 bananas," bananas being the cool wiseguy term for dollars. (It's really semolians.) Anyway, along comes Joe Citizen, with a wheelbarrow laden with 500 bananas and he wants his used Mercury Masquerader or whatever was for sale. When it got to the judge, as I recall, the judge said "90 days, Jerry! When you're hot, you're hot!" No, I mean he ruled that the guy had to accept the deal he advertised.

Thursday, August 13, 2009

(It should be noted that while writing this, I am listening to Country Joe and the Fish doing the Fish Cheer and the Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-to-Die Rag, and also Hendrix's Star-Spangled Banner).

The most heartwarming thing I've seen in quite a while - the Woodstock couple is still together! Nick and Bobbi Ercoline, both 60, married two summers after the fabled weekend, "and they still live less than an hour’s drive from the original concert site of Bethel, N.Y., and within spitting distance of where they both grew up." (from dummr.com). They didn't realize their picture was being taken that Sunday morning as Grace Slick and Jefferson Airplane shattered the Adirondack stillness with "Volunteers." They saw the picture as did the rest of us early the next year when the album came out. Can't you just picture that conversation, when one of their friends came running over from E.J. Korvettes with that triple LP, barking, "Duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuude - it's like YOU GUYS on the album cover. Faaaaaaaaaaaar Outtttttttt man! What we had in mind is breakfast in bed for 300,000! Ladies and Gentlemen, please welcome warmly, Country Joe McDonald!" That album really stuck in our minds.

Putting aside the importance of how far one can loog, it was great to see the Ercolines on NBC Nightly News tonight. Brian Williams somehow covered the story without a mention of expectoration, and it was just great to see that things have gone well for them! I used to look at the album cover and wonder who the heck they were, in much the same way that I still wonder who was the girl in ZZ Top's "Legs" video and also who is the woman who voices over all those margarine commercials and she snickers and chortles too much. Anyway, the Ercolines: she's a school nurse, and he's a retired carpenter. Looks like they have a nice big happy family, and the lovefest that started there in Yasgur's field 40 years ago is still going on.

How sweet!, as Deana would say! Now only one question lingers, and Brian Williams, everyone's favorite former Volunteer firefighter, failed to cover this aspect of it:

Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Seems like the only point of disagreement with most people concerning Michael Vick's return to playing football for a living is whether he should be covered in honey and tied to an anthill, or tossed into a pit of hungry dogs. There's no disputing that what he did, raising dogs for the purpose of entering them in savage dogfights that he put on, was inhumane and unacceptable.

I like dogs and cats. Not so much that I currently have one, because neither Peggy nor I have the time to devote to an animal companion right now, but the time may come that we would, and would then be on the lookout for a poochie dog or kitty cat. And for those of you who have pets, and are so attached to them, I know what Vick did to his animals is just wrong, wrong, wrong.

That much said, I'd like to point out the difference between jail, where one is locked up following an arrest, or for a short confinement...the judicial term for "cooling one's heels"... and the Big House. The Cut. The Iron Bar Hilton. The penitentiary, the correctional institution, is there for longer sentences, and as their names imply, they exist for purposes beyond incarceration, to keep a bad person away from us, deprive him or her of the liberty to come and go as they please, and in some cases to prevent them from harming themselves. In theory, they are there to engender penitence, to correct a person's bad behavior.

Vick went away and served 23 months of a federal "bid," and that had to be greatly different from 23 months of doing what most of us have done since August of 2007. No matter what you hear about prison, the very fact that you can't go to a ballgame or library or the beach is enough to impress upon some people that what they did was wrong and they should not do it again.

There's a debate in California, where they should really be talking about much more important things, about whether Manson Family member Susan Atkins, suffering from terminal cancer, should be granted a mercy parole and allowed to die outside of prison. Fellow MFer Leslie Van Houten seeks parole as well, because she has been a model prisoner and all. I don't know about either of these two women, but I imagine that if you ask the Tate or LaBianca families, there might be strenuous opposition to changing their original penalties of life without parole.

I see the difference as, Vick did his sentence, he claims to be penitent, and do we condemn him to menial work forever just out of a sense of continuing to punish him? And it's certainly not as if I thought he was a great football player. Or a kind man. But that's what he's trained to do, play football, and I'm going to say, let's let him try to go earn his living doing it again. Let's see if the past 23 months have also taught him a little kindness. Just imagine the howling and the catcalls he will have to endure the very minute he leans in to take a snap.

Let's see if the correctional facility corrected his behavior. Let's see if he became penitent while in a penitentiary. Let's see what kind of man he is, then.

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

This fellow in Pittsburgh, George Sodini, felt rejected by women, embarrassed by his mother, bullied by his brother.

Somehow he just never found the handle. It seems that he found some professional success, having become a systems analyst - one of those jobs you hear about people having, but you don't really know what the job entails unless you are one, and then you better hope you know what you're doing.

Sodini didn't know what he was doing when it came to socializing with the opposite sex. He had not been to bed with anyone since 1984, hadn't had a date in almost that long, and it's clear that he just did not have that grip. He made several videos and posted them on YouTube. One of them is a tour of his house; he doesn't say why, in the video, he is taking the viewer on a walkaround, giving details about even how much he paid for the house and how much extra storage space he has, since he's the only occupant. Is he trying to convince prospective mates that his house - speaking metaphorically here: his life - is worth sharing? The other video is a sort of tour of his soul; he talks about what it's like to be he, and that is sad, friends.

He gave up on women his own age and set his sights on younger ones in the video ("my objective is to be real and learn to be emotional and to, you know, to be able to emotionally connect with people because when I am 10 to 20 years older than she is, you know, she has to feel good about this thing.")

But this is the saddest part. "Women just don't like me. There are 30 million desirable women in the US (my estimate) and I cannot find one. Not one of them finds me attractive," he says.

Sad. I guess it's easy to say this in hindsight, but perhaps someone should have steered him to a counselor, who could have helped him learn to like himself, and then he could have found someone.

Remember the old poem "Richard Cory," by Edwin Arlington Robinson? The rich, natty, man-about-town who everyone thinks has everything goes home and puts a bullet through his head. Sodini did the same, after first killing three women at an LA Fitness gym in Pittsburgh.

There is sadness abounding for many, and it's really not all that far beneath the surface. We all know someone lonesome. Wouldn't it be a nice thing to make them feel included, before those lonesome teardrops roil the emotional waters into a turbid, muddy trap for innocent and tortured alike?

Monday, August 10, 2009

Between 1947 and 1956, some 900 rolled-up documents, including passages from the Hebrew Bible, were discovered in eleven caves on the northwest shore of the Dead Sea. The documents have come to be known as the Dead Sea Scrolls. Bedouin shepherds found the scrolls and for a time displayed them in their tents. Eventually, the scrolls, and other artifacts in the caves, found their way to scholars and anthropologists, with two main results:

a) The world has an amazing source to tell us how things were in post- biblical times and how two of the world's great religions had their geneses.

b) I can't go to the mall without someone accosting me, in Peggy's words, asking me if I know what the Dead Sea Scrolls are (pedantic to a fault, I always answer 'yes!' and then offer a free five-minute history lecture to the slack-jawed teenaged accoster). When they get their jaws working in synch again, they offer to rub some sort of ointment on my skin. Apparently, it's obvious from 'way down by Costington's, The Leftorium, and Noiseland Arcade that my skin seems to require defoliation or exfoliation, whichever.

The only reason I went to the mall yesterday was that it was going to be around 117° here, including the heat index and the humidity factor and so forth. I thought we could walk around the mall and get some exercise in, but boy, was I wrong again.

Every ten feet or so, the mall has strategically laid out kiosks, from behind which jump salespeople who have all sorts of questions for me. Do I know what the Dead Sea Scrolls are? Does anyone in my family require math tutoring? Would I like to purchase a time share on a condo in Clovis, New Mexico? Am I satisfied with my cell service? My hi-speed internet? My cable provider? And, without fail, would I like a free sample of bamboo chicken on a pine toothpick?

I have a friend who used to make it a habit to drive four hours to West Virginia and sit through ninety-minute sales pitches for an acre of land in Appalachia and a pre-fab home starting "as low as" $79,000, just to get a 13" TV set. I know people who willingly entertain door-to-door siding, home improvement, encyclopedia and pest removal pitchers just to have someone come in the house, sit on the sofa and have a Dr Pepper with them. There are those who will stop eating their dinner because they answered the phone to hear someone in some distant state wearing a headset say to them, "I'm not selling anything today...this call is for information only."

I should be getting more out of life. I ought to go back to the mall and get some of those pictures with inspirational mottoes, but I just can't run that gauntlet any more. Suggestions?

Sunday, August 9, 2009

(big tip o' the Orioles cap to Snoshu's mom Jonie for pointing this one out to me!)From the Associated Press:

Fla. man blames cat paws for child porn downloads

Fri Aug 7, 8:29 pm ET

JENSEN BEACH, Fla. – Florida investigators say a man accused of downloading child pornography is blaming his cat. Keith Griffin of Jensen Beach is charged with 10 counts of possession of child pornography after detectives found more than 1,000 images on his home computer.

According to a sheriff's report Friday, Griffin told investigators that his cat jumped on the computer keyboard while he was downloading music. He said he had left the room and found "strange things" on his computer when he returned.

Griffin is being held on $250,000 bond in the Martin County jail. It is unclear if he has an attorney.

Well, Keith, you certainly have evinced a flair for the persuasive argument here. Surely, out of a nation whose population tops 307 million, you can round up a dozen good men and women and true to be your jury. Then you'll be free to go home and play your Ted Nugent "Cat Scratch Fever" CD all day long.

I don't know how it comes that we are always putting these things off on the dog or cat. "The dog ate my homework, the cat got into the Kelvinator and ate the rest of the caviar..." Seems to me, all that dogs and cats want to do is be your friend, either sit-in-your-lap style or pet-the-back-of-my-neck-for-an-hour style (dogs) or catch-the-occasional-fleeting-glimpse-of-me-as-I-regally-prance-about-the-house style (cats).

So don't drag them into your perverse porno lifestyle, be my advice here, Keithamundo. Best bet would be to hope you can get a Freudian/Jungian judge and blame it all on your mother and her inadequate methods of toilet training, because I hear that if you draw a five-to-ten bid in the cut, some of your fellow inmates will be doggedly determined to make your life less than purr-fect. They won't care how you're feline.

Saturday, August 8, 2009

People often ask me how does it come that sometimes these blog entries are long and wordy, and sometimes they are short and breezy.

Well, it all depends on the news.

If there is something ponderous on the horizon that bears discussion by the learned heads upon whose wisdom we so heavily lean, I like to keep it short, allowing all the right nuts to be finished reading by noon, so as to tune in Rush Limbaugh and be told how to feel about things and what to say and how loudly to shout at town hall meetings, since that's the way we operate here in the good ol' US of A. We shout and we stomp our feet and carry a big stick and doggone it, if we don't like your religion or your foreign policy tenets, we are coming after you with our vaunted military forces. 'Specially if you got oil and all.

Note to composing department: in preceding paragraph, please be SURE to insert the word "wing" between "right" and "nuts" before we send this to Blogger for publication. Yikes!

Does he measure up to your expectations?

The other day, Rush, adipose as always, made some snide remark about whether Mr Clinton would take liberties with the two females whose freedom from North Korean jail he had helped arrange. Attaboy, Jeff* ! Make your ad hominem attacks when there is nothing bad to say about the man's actions! Go for the cheap, the scurrilous reference to indiscretions in the man's past. Good thing your history is so pristine Oxycontin that no man, woman or child could find fault with you made your maid buy you drugs.

Composing: again! with the poor editing! PLEASE be sure to remove the word Oxycontin and the phrase "made your maid buy you drugs" from the previous sentence prior to publication. Who in the world keeps hitting those wrong keys?

*Jeff Christie was Rush's radio name. He is not to be confused with DJ Jazzy Jeff, though. He should have called himself "Ty Malone" because that is what he truly, truly needs.

Friday, August 7, 2009

I can't believe that we are going to have to get through the ardors of another American Idol season without Paula Abdul. One can only hope that this "I quit" is some sort of contract ploy being orchestrated (I had hoped to save the use of that phrase for when some orchestra leader was having a contract dispute, but all of our precious baton-wielders seem happily in tune with their employers) by her new manager, one David Sonnenberg, who one minute said she wanted 20 million semolians to come back and then returned with a bargain basement fee of 12 million. In a statement that clearly shows the cogent lucidity with which the ex-Laker Girl would use to comment on the young people who trooped in and out of our lives every spring, Paula said, "With sadness in my heart, I’ve decided not to return to IDOL,” on her Twitter page. “I’ll miss nurturing all the new talent, but most of all being a part of a show that I helped from day 1 become an international phenomenon.”

One thinks of Pernell Roberts , who had to leave Bonanza to play Hamlet or something, and David Caruso, who found NYPD Blue beneath him artistically, and Jimmy Smits, another television performer who saw greater artistic expression playing the aggrieved husband on made-for-Lifetime® movies.

Paula, take this advice: if they offer you more than the minimum wage, stay with AI. I'm out here with the real people of the world, and there is an amazingly small demand for your records and videos, even the ones featuring MC Skat Kat. It's what, two, three nights a week listening to the Adams and the Jasons and the Alexises warble and dance around?

Come on, Paula. You can handle this! I'm saying this because we need you. You know what Randy is going to say about everyone, dawg, and Simon is predictable, too. But Paula brought that "elle ne sait quoi" quality that any Randy/Simon/Kara lineup will lack.

Thursday, August 6, 2009

Here where I live, and probably where you are as well, there's a debate brewing about the use of speed cameras - remote devices that would calculate the speed of a speeding auto as it speeds along the highways. Notice how often I used the word speed in that sentence; even if you were speed-reading, you likely picked up on that. I'm as subtle as a burp in church.

Those opposed see this as another sign of interference with their right to career along life's highway (figuratively and literally) as they see fit, all willy-nilly, with no regard for the safety of others. Ever try getting OFF an interstate lately? You play hell doing so because of the people getting ON the superslab. They're coming off that entrance ramp, and watch out! Right of way? Common sense? Consideration? All thrown out the window, just like that McWrapper and drink cup.

People are all up in arms. They do not wish to be caught speeding. It's not that they mind speeding; they just don't want anyone to know about it!

No one except for those who plan to rob banks or convenience stores would be against having security cameras in banks and convenience stores. I submit that those who worry about speed cameras are planning to speed and don't want to pay fines for it as they run me off the road like that d-bag at Hillen Rd and Stevenson Lane the other afternoon. Right up behind me he drove, and when I dared to drive the speed limit, he pulled out and passed me, crossing a double line on a curve, the better to display his sideways hat and logic.

Yeah, don't fine him. He needs all his money to purchase three more pink polo shirts with popped collars, to be worn all at once.

I just decided; if I ever go back on the radio I am going to use the fake name "Rob Banks." "

Tuesday, August 4, 2009

SEATTLE -- A high school student is suing Amazon.com Inc. for deleting an e-book he purchased for the Kindle reader, saying his electronic notes were bollixed, too.

Amazon CEO Jeffrey P. Bezos has apologized to Kindle customers for remotely removing copies of the George Orwell novels "1984" and "Animal Farm" from their e-reader devices. The company did so after learning the electronic editions were pirated, and it gave buyers automatic refunds. But Amazon did it without prior notice.

The lawsuit seeking class-action status was filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Seattle on behalf of Justin D. Gawronski, 17, a student at Eisenhower High School in Shelby Township, Mich., as well as Antoine J. Bruguier, an adult reader in Milpitas, Calif.

I recall the trepidation with which the world faced 1984, and many people discussing this gloomy Orwell forecast. At least two dozen of them actually read the book. As we dozed through countless Literature classes, countless instructors told us of what would happen when that horrible year arrived. But no amount of preparation or pre-planning could have made that year more palatable. Looking over that year via the magic of Google, we see that Madonna became a big star, the Baltimore Colts moved to a small town in Indiana, and a former movie actor, against all odds, was re-elected president of the United States. Orwell foresaw totalitarianism, repression, government spying and intimidation, and we got "Like a Virgin," Robert Irsay, and the onetime host of Death Valley Days in the White House.

One amazing prediction is the theory advanced by some that Orwell entitled his book 1984 to salute the year 1884, which is when the Fabian society was formed. How people in 1884 knew that Fabian Forte would be born in 1943 is something not mentioned in the book.

Monday, August 3, 2009

Opponents of the president's health care plan - they must be related because I hear all their names are Legion - might be encouraged to know that, in the great state of Florida, they have found a way to give a medical exam to people who aren't even around. This should cheer the nay-sayers, because, armed with articles such as this from some outfit called The First Coast News, they can prove that even missing persons can get adequate checkups, as things are currently constituted:

MISSING BOATERS GET CHECKED BY DOCTOR

JACKSONVILLE, FL -- Two boaters who drifted in the Atlantic Ocean for a couple of days are now back on dry land.

Officials with the Jacksonville Port Authority said the men were checked out by a doctor and were on their way back home to the West Palm Beach area late Tuesday night.

Vincent Faulkner and Eric Ross were brought back to shore by a large fuel tanker named the Yasa Seyhan, which was carrying Hess gasoline. Port Manager, Denny Garner, said the tanker found the pair drifting about 70 miles from Jacksonville on Tuesday afternoon.

On Tuesday evening, a First Coast News crew watched the large vessel make it's way under the Dames Point Bridge in Jacksonville.

The U.S. Coast Guard searched by plane and boat for days, and called the rescue a "miracle."

Garner told First Coast News the pair showered, ate, and rested while on the Yasa Seyhan.

Garner said the men told the captain of the Yasa Seyhan they ran out of water and gasoline two days ago, and were then carried away by a storm.

As the tanker pulled into port, First Coast News saw a small, white boat visible on the deck.

Faulkner and Ross declined on-camera interviews after reaching shore. Officials with the Port Authority said they were exhausted and had to see a doctor before returning home.

First Coast News

You can tell this is a first-class news operation, the way they know how to write about watching the ship make "it's" way under the bridge. And that last sentence: "Officials with the Port Authority said they were exhausted..." Why would officials with the Port Authority be exhausted? They weren't the ones out there bobbing around in the ocean!